Ash Forests no more

The natural forest cover in this area is deciduous trees.  Plus we're on the edge of the Carolinian Forest area, which runs south, east and west of our area.   For a heavily rural farming area, there are a lot of bush lots, small conservation areas and tree lines, which have a great diversity of flora.  It is unexpectedly beautiful in it's own way.  

But the Emerald Ash Borer has caused huge amounts of devastation.   There are were a lot of Ash trees in our area.  For years now, we've been getting downed Ash trees for firewood.    This year though, our hikes have shown us the reality of the Ash wood lots in our area.   Acre after acre of ash trees, cut down.   You could tell here that some of the dying or dead ash trees were left standing because in places, there would be nothing left.  

Big or small, the Emerald Ash Borer didn't discriminate over which trees it attacked.   It looks like it went from tree, to tree, to tree, eating it's way though whole forests.   

I've been careful about where I've been snapping pictures on our hikes, choosing more uplifting, happier, photos, with little damage and few downed trees.   Pretty much all of the trails have some Ash trees cut down for safety reasons.

I think there have been places we've been with more trees cut down, but here we were walking and walking through this.   It was difficult to see the differences in some places, as it all looked so much the same - trees cut down, left to decompose on the forest floor, a few other trees left standing.

Maybe it's just with the snow and lack of the canopy of leaves, it looks worse.   It seemed just a tad like apocalyptic  scenery from a sci-fi film when we went out on Saturday.  What is sadder yet, is this is the closest trail to home!    We had to cut the ash trees in our yard down two years ago :(

In happier news; flax singles!   I'm spinning flax tow, so it has a few slubby bits and maybe isn't quite as fine as I'd like it to be.  All in all though, I'm happy with it.     I'm wet spinning it, from the commercially prepared tow flax top - say that 10 times quickly, lol!  I'm using a z twist because it doesn't seem to spin any differently if I use s twist.  I figured I might as well just make it easy to spin by rote in that case, so z twist it is.   There are about 328 yards in this skein.

I was looking at lights for better photos and although a decent set up isn't horribly expensive, there are a couple of other major house renos/repairs still in the rotation.  So I got a piece of white bristol board, and two pieces of white foam core board.  I taped them together to make a reflector and put them in front of the window.   It's not perfect, but it's not bad either.   I think with some fiddling it could be better.